Killing Fields

This is the kind of story that builds over time, so it's difficult to tell--Discovery made only one episode available--whether the rest of the series will stay as compelling as the pilot. But it's a doozy of an episode.

[Rodie Sanchez is] so magnetic you’ll forget that this is an unscripted series.... Discovery sent one episode to critics, but it was enough to suggest that The Killing Fields should appeal to fans of both true-crime documentaries and fictionalized police procedurals.

Fontana and Levinson probably couldn’t write a better TV character than Sanchez or create a better TV setting than Iberville Parish.... What’s really missing is something Serial, The Jinx and Making a Murderer all had: a suspect.... In any case, Killing Fields at least generates anxiety and a desire to see what happens next.

The people are real, the case is real, the place is real, and yet Killing Fields has the veneer of fiction to it--partly due to the natural tendency of human beings to view themselves as characters in their own stories, but also due to some unfortunately heavy-handed production choices.

An interesting mystery is hampered by over-production, scripted interview scenes and other signs of a show trying to please instead of just letting the action unfold.

Killing Fields relies on the kind of obviously staged or at least partly artificial action that typifies the reality-TV end of true crime.

Killing Fields certainly didn't create this [reality TV] environment, but it does exist in it, albeit clumsily. Yes, these are real people, but so much of it feels phony.